This week, Vanity Fair unveiled at Amazon's upcoming Fallout series which is set to premiere on Prime Video on April 12. Set in the world of Bethesda's role-playing series, the show was developed by husband-and-wife duo Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan. They created Westworld together, and Nolan co-wrote several of his famous brother Christopher's blockbuster movies. More exciting than any of that, though, is the fact that Walton Goggins is playing a ghoul. Not just any ghoul, either. The Ghoul.
Goggins has always had a unique look. The 52-year old actor is undoubtedly handsome, with a strong jaw, high cheekbones, piercing eyes that are all the more pronounced for his dark, bold eyebrows, and a 10-kilowatt smile. But, his looks are also slightly off kilter in a way that has made him more of a character actor than a traditional leading man. The top half of his face is dominated by a huge expanse of forehead that ends in dark, wispy hair that sometimes resembles the splay of a paintbrush's bristles. His skin is tight and leathery. And that great smile can sometimes look a little too big for his face, like his mouth is struggling to contain two rows of perfect prop teeth.
Don’t read this as a dig at Goggins; his blend of traditional good looks and slightly off weirdness is part of what makes him an imminently watchable actor. You could buy him as a white hatted cowboy if the film demanded it, but he’s much more believable and entertaining, say, as Chris Mannix, the racist claiming to be the next sheriff of Red Rock in The Hateful Eight, or as Billy Crash, Calvin Candie’s sadistic plantation over🃏seer in Django Unchained. Quentin Tarantino has a preternatural gift for casting, and both of the times he’s worked with Goggins (outside of a small voice role in the extended cut of Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood) the director has cast him as someone who might look like a gentleman if you squint, but who has a deep rot just beneath the surface.
That mixture of quirks and good looks makes Goggins a perfect fit to play The Ghoul in Amazon's upcoming Fallout TV series adaptation. In the Fallout games, ghouls are largely low-level enemies, former humans who have been transformed into violent zombies by years of exposure to nuclear radiation. But, in the games, you sometimes meet ghouls who remain human in all but appearance, with the capacity for emotion and rational thought. The Ghoul character that Goggins plays in the series is, per the Vanity Fair story that unveiled the first in-depth look, is a bounty hunter who has survived for hundreds of years, a rough character who nonetheless lives by a code.
John Hancock, who can become ๊a companꦑion in Fallout 4, is one example of a ghoul who seems essentially human.
When discussing the prosthetics used to make Goggins look like a ghoul, Nolan alluded to the balancing act of Goggins' whole deal. "I need to be able to see Walton and his performance," Nolan said, "He needs to look like a Ghoul from the game, and he needs to be kind of hot." Somehow, Goggins is walking the line. He looks cool as hell in a promotional image that shows The Ghoul, with his cowboy hat tipped over his eyes. But, in another image, he just looks like a ghoul, with leathery, rust-colored skin.
As The Ghoul, Goggins looks like a cowboy, and a monster. Fallout appears to be tapping into the same duality that Tarantino found in him. As cool as the Power Armor looks, Goggins' performance is what I'm most anxious to see.
